


"Je t'aime et je t'aime bien"

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 15:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A non-linear series of Paris-based fluff vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Je t'aime et je t'aime bien"

***

Halfway over the Atlantic Ocean, she slips her right hand into his left and silently resolves not to let go until their feet touch American soil again. It’s a resolve broken several times before the plane even lands at Charles de Gaulle (how else would she eat the tiny, greasy croissant), but the _feeling_ doesn’t break, and she holds her husband’s hand all over Paris, on the Metro and the Left Bank and through narrow cobbled streets.

***

“How’d you know I wanted to go to Paris someday?”

“Everybody wants to go to Paris someday,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s true.” They’re in a shuttle van bumping over the interstate outside the Indianapolis airport. Her best friend in the world is moving away and her career needs so much planning and god, yes, she wants to go to Paris.

Ben reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and pulls out a small, dog-eared, brightly colored book, still annotated with Post-Its. “I found this when we were unpacking the last round of books.”

“I forgot I had that.” She takes the Parisian guidebook, flipping open the front cover to check the publication date. “1996. We might want a newer one.”

“There’s an app on my iPad,” he says. “Or—you’re going to buy a new guidebook in the airport, aren’t you?”

“You can’t write in the margins of an iPad app.”

***

“Versailles,” she says, firmly. “No more museums. Versailles.”

“I think that’s technically also a museum,” Ben points out, but he doesn’t need convincing to go, and he doesn’t object to being pushed up against a garden hedge when the security guards aren’t looking.

Later, they hold hands in the middle of Eagleton on steroids times a million, and Leslie feels grateful she doesn’t have to dust in here.

“The French really knew how to treat themselves,” Ben remarks.

“They really did.”

***

She’s got a dress stashed in the back of her closet, nice but not too nice, unworn, waiting for the right occasion. It’s a little unseasonal for Paris, but it’s more fashion-forward than some of her more wintery dresses, so she folds it into the garment bag and stashes a pair of heels in with her boots and sneakers.

Ben pokes his head in from the bathroom. “You’re packing something nice, right?”

She nods.

***

She holds his hand across the Pont Neuf and along the Champs-Élysées and under the vaulted ceilings of Saint-Chapelle, where the stained glass takes her breath away.

“Too bad we don’t have these in City Hall instead of the murals,” she mutters, and Ben nudges her with an elbow. “I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be thinking about Pawnee.”

He kisses her in the Upper Chapel, and she kisses him outside, temporarily forgetting they’re waiting in line at a croque monsieur cart.

***

Their hotel room is narrow and dark, with a tiny bed to match, crammed diagonally into one corner to accommodate a tipsy-looking, overlarge bureau wedged into the other corner. They have a view of trash cans in a back alley and Leslie hopes it’s not even half this noisy at night.

“Well,” Ben says slowly, “the website did say it was quaint.”

She throws her suitcase onto the bed, which creaks ominously. “We’re not going to be spending much time here anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Hey, do you want to do a boat tour tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

***

They make out on the boat tour, and in front of the Eiffel Tower, in half a dozen Metro stations, in the foyer of the Palais Garnier.

***

“Flying buttresses,” Leslie says, pointing at the outside of Notre Dame. “I remember that from my Renaissance art history class.”

“Flying buttresses,” Ben repeats after her. Their palms slip together, sweating a little in the unseasonably warm weather, and he grips her hand a little tighter. Her stomach clenches for half a beat before he swoops in, muttering “I’ll flying buttress you” under his breath.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she whispers, knowing full well neither of them care.

They don’t make out inside the cathedral; it wouldn’t feel right. They stand in the nave, where the air is slightly cooler, breathing in history.

***

“That’s the first real disappointment of the trip,” Ben says, scowling over his shoulder at the Louvre, which doesn’t seem to get any smaller as they walk away.

“I told you it would be too crowded around the Mona Lisa to tell if her eyes really follow us around the room.”

“You also told me we couldn’t circle back around because the vegetable head paintings were creepy.”

Leslie frowns. “I know. I’m sorry. But I stand by what I said: those things were horrifying. They shouldn’t be on public display.”

“They’re _art_ ,” Ben argues.

To cheer them both up, she drags him into the nearest tourist shop and makes him model berets for her.

“ _Oui_?” he asks. “Oh, wait. Let me try it with a mustache.”

Leslie shakes her head. “ _Non_.” She drags his finger away from his upper lip and slides their knuckles together, so that they have to sidle through the narrow aisles and out into the cobblestone street, where she sees a café and makes the snap decision that _du thé_ and _du croissants_ will do the trick better.

***

“So were you _going_ to go to Paris, or…”

“I was,” she says, stretching out her legs as far as they’ll go in the cab. After all those hours on the plane, she needs a walk, and wonders whether Ben thought to book a hotel near a cute little Parisian park. She forms a picture in her mind’s eye, shaking her head when she realizes Pepe Le Pew has infiltrated her imaginary Parisian duck pond. “I got it in college. I was dating this guy and he was going to study abroad for a semester, so I thought—”

“But you never visited him?”

“No, we broke up before he left. He said something about French girls.”

Ben takes her left hand in his right and rubs his thumb in slow, absent circles over her rings.

“I kept the book, though,” she adds, aware the clarification isn’t necessary.

“Why didn’t you study abroad?”

“I don’t know.” There were reasons, she had reasons at the time, but it was almost twenty years ago and everything seems foggy in jet lag. “It was expensive, I guess, and it would have been a lot harder to finish my second minor.”

Looking at Paris through the grimy windows of their cab, it’s hard to imagine why those reasons seemed so important.

***

_I like something classic, but not too classic, you know? And Chris is going between saying everything I come up with is the greatest name ever in the history of the world, and wanting to name him after anyone who’s ever accomplished anything amazing. So you may be welcoming William Sir Edmund Hillary Jesse Owens Charles Jonas Salk into the world, if we can’t decide._

Leslie’s about to type _What about Joseph?_ when the wifi goes out and doesn’t come back on.

She picks up the new guidebook and thumbs through the suggested restaurants again.

***

“You’re wearing a suit to do tourist stuff?”

Ben pauses, hand halfway to his unknotted tie. “Well, what if we don’t make it back here before dinner?”

“Fair enough.” She puts her jeans back in the tipsy bureau, and pulls the dress out of the closet. It’ll look better in their photos, anyway, in a suit, _it_ being her husband’s butt. “Honey, where’d you put the AC adapters?”

His brow furrows somewhat. “Your curling iron’s probably going to blow up this room.”

“No, it won’t.”

She short-circuits the clock temporarily, even with the AC adapter, but that seems minor.

***

The mattress is lumpy, but not too lumpy, and it’s noisy outside, but it sounds like _Paris_ ; they’re in Paris, just like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Pamela Harriman. Leslie had a chocolate croissant for breakfast, chocolate crème brûlée with lunch, chocolate gateau for dinner, and a chocolate crepe from a vendor at the edge of the XIVth Arrondissement just before they came back to the hotel, and she can almost feel all those things accumulating around her hips—but nothing she ate counts, because she’s on vacation and they walked for miles and maybe what she feels around her hips is Ben’s hands sliding under the edges of her underwear. He peels them off, and she reaches behind her to get rid of the bra.

He kisses down her sternum, across her stomach, in between her legs. For a moment she’s tempted to ask if she tastes like chocolate tonight, but he folds his tongue against her and she remains silent, melting into the pillow.

***

Anyway, she’s glad she waited until now to visit Paris, because whatever her twenty-year-old self imagined about romance was wrong, entirely wrong. It’s better to see the city this way.

“You have more than one color of Sharpie in your purse?”

He ought to know the answer to that already. “Of course I do.”

She draws the heart in red. They run their thumbs over it, in turn, before snapping their padlock to the chain link.

***

“Leslie, we already went to the Eiffel Tower.”

“Yeah,” she says, squeezing his hand, “but we saw it during the day. We should go up to the top at night, too.”

He smiles and nods.

They stand close to the edge of the viewing platform, all the lights of Paris twinkling, bleeding into the night sky until most of the stars are blotted out.

“You want to put another euro in the telescope thing?”

“No.” She leans back against him as hard as she can, knowing he’ll support her, and pulls his arms more tightly around her waist. “I just want to stand here for a little while.”

“Okay.”

It’s a rush, still, hearing the dopey grin in his voice without having to turn around and look for it on his face.

“Ben.”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

He drops his chin to the top of her head and rests it there. The city moves around the tower, even at this hour, but everything around them remains still, the bubble unbroken. She takes a deep breath, and contentment hits her square in the chest, forcing her breath out in a happy sigh.

“Leslie?”

“Why do you love me _this much_?” She’s asked the question before, knows the answer, but she still shivers in anticipation as he holds her close and takes a deep breath to prepare.

“You’re _Leslie Knope_ ,” Ben tells her.

She closes her eyes and lets the wind brush her cheeks.

***

_fin_


End file.
